Farm Sanctuary Rescue: Frank The Bull

- Tracey Stewart

There I was minding my own business, sitting at my desk drowning in a pile of things that had to get done, when the phone rang. I heard Farm Sanctuary National Director Susie Coston’s delicious, raspy voice, “Hey, do you think you could go to Queens to pick up a bull?” Time stopped. My heart filled with excitement and a huge smile spread across my face. “Are you shitting me? Yes!!!” I whispered. The rest of the story ended up being widely covered in the news.

The tidbits I can add to the story are that my husband was so deliriously sexy through the whole thing, Mike Stura of Skylands Sanctuary was so badass in teaching me how to load a bull, Susie Coston and Vyolet Savage kept me laughing the whole day as we went back and forth by phone, and when I returned home that night and saw the pile of things that had to get done but hadn’t, I realized that that was so okay. Life is good! People are awesome! Frank the Bull is divine!

Escaped bull in queens finds sanctuary

It was the morning of April Fools’ Day, and we’d gotten word that a bull was on the loose in Queens, New York. But this was no joke. The “black baldy” Angus/Hereford cross we’d all come to know as Frank had escaped as he was being unloaded from a truck at a Queens live market, a storefront slaughterhouse where customers can select live animals they’d like to bring home as meat.

But that would not be Frank’s fate. Instead, he would hitch a ride to Farm Sanctuary courtesy of Farm Sanctuary Board Member Tracey Stewart and her husband Jon, former host of “The Daily Show.”

One of 30 million cattle slaughtered for meat annually in the US., Frank stands as an ambassador. We are unsure why a bull was being slaughtered, since most of the cattle sent to be butchered are steers (neutered males) or cows (females, usually ones who are not producing babies annually for milk production). But we have no doubt that Frank is someone special. Frank chose his destiny that fateful morning. And like any animal coming from a farm situation into a huge city with smells, sounds and sights that are so far from what they are used to, he panicked. And the reaction to his escape only made things worse. He found grass — likely the only familiar thing he could see — but this was on a campus full of people at York College in Jamaica, Queens.

It was there that he was surrounded by people with camera phones, laughter, screaming, and chaos. It was completely foreign experience. And he was alone. Cattle are herd animals and have a very ordered social structure. They are much more secure when they are in a herd and the herd is basically a large family group.

And then, came the police and guns loaded with tranquilizer darts. He sustained two shots before he was taken away — thankfully to a place where he could be safe, Animal Care Centers of Brooklyn.

The rest of the story is now national news and Frank is now safe, happy and feeling much more secure.

A few days after his rescue, Frank started calming down and began to feel more at ease. At the Cornell University Hospital for Animals he is being checked over and looked at for any ill effects from the tranquilizer darts used to capture him. He’s a bit under the weather, but overall, is settling in and should be coming to live at Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen very soon. He is definitely not the same boy he was in the city — he is much more laid-back! He will soon join his new herd and cattle family, have lifelong care and can live in peace.